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One of the greatest political leaders that the world has ever known, Nelson “Rolihlahla” Mandela, has finally passed from this realm of mortal existence. He was a man of immense courage and absolute moral integrity, and, perhaps most importantly, he possessed the will and determination to live his beliefs in a manner that accepted no compromise to the integrity of his principles – and of course the most well-known instance of this was his 27 years spent in prison on Robben Island. I am sure that, like the recent Melissa Bachman lion hunting incident which provoked so much online debate, there will be a flurry of internet activity regarding his passing, but in this piece I want to focus on the life he lived, and how his example is so extremely relevant to each and every one of us and the way we live our own lives.

I want to mainly talk about the years he spent in jail, for this is perhaps one of the most famous aspects of his life, along with his major role in the negotiations to bring about an peaceful end to apartheid and a transition to democracy for all racial groups in South Africa. Many people are aware that he was a political prisoner, yet not many know a lot of details regarding his imprisonment. I read his autobiography, A Long Walk To Freedom, a few years ago and it was a fantastic and inspirational read. Mandela’s life was coloured by a history of struggles against injustice, immense self-development and learning, putting thoughts and words into action, and most importantly, sacrifice.

Sacrifice is a word that has many connotations – many of them negative. We think of human sacrifice in the darker periods of human history, done to appease angry gods of fire, water and storm. We think of the very definition of the word; giving up something that we hold dear, of forgoing pleasures, of loss. Yet it is for exactly this that we admire Mandela – he made possibly the greatest sacrifice, aside from giving his life (which perhaps would have been easier, in fact) – he sacrificed his freedom for the sake of justice, for the sake of what was right. It is easy to say “he spent 27 years in prison”. It is far harder to visualise what that entails. Although I have not visited Robben Island myself, in his autobiography Mandela describes the state of the cells in vivid detail, and the nature of the endless, soul-destroying routine and drudgery of prison life is brought home in an expert manner in his book. Most people would find it hard to survive a few days in such conditions, let alone 27 years.This is almost as long as I’ve been alive.

Did you know that he had many opportunities to leave prison and regain his freedom? I’m not talking about daring escape plans – no, I am talking about offers from the apartheid government to walk out of prison, officially. Now let us remember that not only was it merely his individual freedom that was so severely restricted by those cruel steel bars that kept him in that cage – it was his access to a wife he loved dearly, to his children who were growing up without a father in their lives. Think about that for a second. You are imprisoned. Your days consist of breaking rocks in a quarry from sunrise to sunset. You are prohibited from talking with your friends. You are prevented from seeing the woman you love, and your own children, who are growing up without you.

Now, you are offered an end to all of this. You can walk out of the doors, your crimes pardoned, back into the arms of your wife, back to the smiles and laughter of your sons and daughters. All you have to do is relinquish your principles. What would you do?

Mandela said no. He would suffer in solidarity with the oppressed, who suffered in silence, and he would continue to suffer with them until such time that his sacrifice would free them. A lesser man would have walked out of that prison cell many decades before 27 years was up. A lesser man would have walked away from his principles, would have given up his beliefs in exchange for the sweet, sweet fruit of freedom. And sure enough, his sacrifice did finally result in the realisation of his goals. And this is why he was a hero, in the truest sense of the word. In all of the epics, in all of humanity’s tales of strength, courage and valour, in all cultures across the expanse of the earth, the great hero must make a sacrifice in order to save the world. Mandela was such a man. He sacrificed the best years of his life, almost three decades at that, to free the oppressed masses from the apartheid tyrants who curtailed their freedom. And thus he is rightly revered, admired and honoured as a hero of our age.

However, what I want to ask is this: how many of us are prepared to follow in his footsteps with deeds rather than just mere words? For we all have the potential to be Nelson Mandelas – all it takes is courage, integrity and willpower – three qualities that unfortunately are tremendously lacking in today’s society. Everyone knows that it is far easier to talk about things than to do them. But as Yoda says in Star Wars – “Do not try. Do, or do not. There is no try.” Mandela did. He did not try, he did not think about it or argue or make excuses, he just did what needed to be done – and that was to make an immense personal sacrifice.

It is very easy to praise his life, to say how much of a role model he was, to talk about the heroic things he did and how they inspire us. Incredibly, wonderfully easy totalk about these things, isn’t it? It’s also easy to think that Mandela did what he did, and that now all is well, and that singing songs and holding hands and being smiley happy people is all that is needed to right the wrongs in this world, and maybe in addition we can go and do a good deed for someone less fortunate once a year on Mandela day.

I’m sorry, but that is exactly what Nelson Mandela would NOT have wanted. He would have wanted us, I believe, to follow in his footsteps in our daily lives. To do, not just to talk and make token gestures once in a while. Mandela may have played a massive role in bringing about the end of apartheid and ushering in democracy to South Africa, but that does not mean injustice has been vanquished from the world. Exploitation and slavery are thriving. Injustice is rampant. Destruction and greed abound and are annihilating everything that was once good and green in this world. And why is this the current state of affairs – because of a collective state of complete apathy, willful ignorance and addiction to sensory pleasures and convenience on the part of almost the entire first world.

Another great, but perhaps not so well-known man is Philip Wollen, an Australian philanthropist who has done much for the cause of non-violence, and has helped countless beings (both impoverished humans and mistreated animals) all over the world. One of my favourite quotes of his is this: “I’ve spoken to good, decent people all over the world, who have a genuine desire to change the world… As long as they don’t have to change themselves”. Now what am I getting at with this? You see, Nelson Mandela had a clearly defined enemy to fight against. His enemy was the National Party, the system of Apartheid, and entrenched ideas of racial superiority and white dominance in South Africa. We know that he won a great victory in achieving his goals, and we know that he did it by immense self-sacrifice, courage and perseverance.

While the National Party is dead and buried, and the system of Apartheid lies rotting in an unmarked grave, other enemies still thrive. Enemies that grow stronger and stronger every year, every week, every day, every hour. These enemies are more ruthless and rapacious than the National Party ever was. There is no low to which they will not stoop in the name of profits. They have not an ounce of integrity, nor an iota of compassion or empathy in how they operate. They are legion, and are too many to mention, for they form a great and complex web into which the entire global economy is interwoven. Their limbs are the factory farms that enslave and torture billions (literally) of sentient beings, the trawlers who dredge the oceans and deplete them of all life for the sake of one catch, the ranchers who are hacking down the Amazon Rainforest to make way for grazing land to supply cheap burger beef, the loggers in South East Asia who are slashing and burning jungle and rainforest that had stood unmolested for millions of years to make way for palm oil plantations, oil companies who are denuding and polluting millions of acres in their quest for black gold and fracking for gases, sweatshops in the third world who force the impoverished into labour reminiscent of the worst days of 18th century slavery, factories who destroy entire rivers and ecosystems with their toxic run-off… I could go on, but you’re getting the picture, I imagine.

A popular bracelet worn by Christians features the slogan WWJD, an acronym for “What Would Jesus Do?”. On this eve of his passing, I suggest we start asking the question “What Would Nelson Do?”, and looking inward and bringing our own lives and habits under scrutiny. These enemies who are exploiting, destroying and threatening the very survival of our species and many others are not as mighty and unassailable as you might think. Theirs is a heavy, heavy weight, and it must be supported by millions of pillars or it will collapse utterly. Each pillar is one of us. YOU. ME. In this article, I talk about how a wallet is one of the most powerful weapons one can wield, and I’d like to reiterate that point here. WWND? He would fight against this massive and unspeakable evil. And how would he do it? In the words of Philip Wollen – he would change himself. Indeed, the great Mandela did – and, as Yoda would put it, he did. He did not try, he did. WWND? He would not support these tyrannical industries. He would make sacrifices, (as he did for 27 years of his life) in order to do the right thing and bring about change.

The enemies we are dealing with in this day and age are those I mentioned above, but there is another terrible and powerful enemy, a dark lord who gives strength and unlimited power to all of those evil industries I mentioned above, and more. He lives in us, in all of our hearts. He is Apathy. He is Selfishness. He is Willful Ignorance. He is Addiction. He is Spite. He is a Slave to Sensory Pleasures. He is Endless Distractions.

Nelson Mandela was a man who was extremely fond of reading. He had to be, to get where he was in life. We are living in the Age of Information – more information is at our fingertips than has ever been available in any great library or university. Everything you could possibly want to learn about is a mouse click away. And the exposés are everywhere. Twenty years ago, even a highly educated individual in a first world country could be justifiably ignorant about the devastation caused by their lifestyle of convenience and carefree addictions. Now, this is no longer the case. We are all plugged into this matrix 24/7 with our notebooks, smartphones and social media networks. It is now the case that it is rather difficult to remain ignorant about the horrors our lifestyle of careless consumption enables. The information is there, and is often in our faces, but we refuse to look. We don’t want to feel uncomfortable, we don’t want to feel that we are part of the problem, that our habits and wants are the driving force behind this rampage of violence, exploitation and destruction. “Don’t tell me about that, it’ll put me off my dinner.” “You know what, I really don’t want to know about that.” “I don’t like thinking about that, okay?” These are about the worst things you can say, because loosely translated, they state: “I’m comfortable doing what I’m doing, so I’m going to keep on supporting these awful systems, because I don’t want to change myself.” But is that what Nelson would have said? He had plenty of opportunities to turn a blind eye to injustice, as we all do every day. But he did not. And neither did other great leaders who changed the course of history; Mahatma Ghandi, Dr Martin Luther King, Aung Suu Kyi and others. They saw injustice, and they did not look away. They made personal sacrifices to fight against the injustice they perceived.

For many years, I didn’t want to look either. I enjoyed my coca cola, my burgers, my cheese, my products of convenience. But always, at the back of my mind a voice was telling me that when I was consuming these things, I was supporting something awful, something that I’d be ashamed to tell my grandkids about one day, when they asked me “grandpa, why did you stand by and allow these things to happen?”, as surely the grandchildren of many Germans must have asked of the generation who ushered in the Nazis and allowed them to remain in power. It was all too easy to silence that little voice; convenience and apathy are powerful devils on one’s shoulder. Peer pressure bends us all too easily. Societal conventions and the mocking opinions shouted from The Great Crowd strike fear into every chamber of our little conformist hearts. Being different makes for a lonely existence. Sacrifice is hard – extremely hard. Laziness is easy. Willful ignorance is even easier. Constant distraction, consumerism and losing oneself in fleeting sensory pleasures are the absolute easiest.

WWND?

I did what Nelson did. I stopped burying my head in the sand. I chose the hard road, and with every new discovery I make, with every new bit of information I learn about how the lifestyles we lead and the products we are addicted to consuming are destroying the earth and causing untold suffering and misery for billions of other earthlings, the road becomes narrower, steeper, and darker. But my soul feels right now, and the more personal sacrifices I make, the more comforts I give up, the more conscientiously I try to live my life, the more I inconvenience myself, the more addictions I have to defeat, the more at odds I become with what everyone else thinks are the good things in life, the better I feel.

Many have quoted the lines of William Ernest Henly’s Invictus on this sad day of Madiba’s passing, yet few actually grasp the true impact of these lines. They are not about being a smiley happy blissfully ignorant person. They are about facing adversity, about traveling a long, dark and lonely road, but maintaining your absolute integrity through whatever hells you may have to endure and coming out at the end as Captain of your Soul:

Out of the night that covers me,Black as the Pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may beFor my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstanceI have not winced nor cried aloud.Under the bludgeonings of chanceMy head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tearsLooms but the Horror of the shade,And yet the menace of the yearsFinds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,How charged with punishments the scroll.I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul.

Take a look at the world around you. Open your eyes. Educate, educate, EDUCATE yourself. And finally, if you really want to commemorate one of the greatest leaders mankind has known: WWND?

It’s been about two weeks since the opinion war on Melissa Bach’s lion hunt broke out all over the internet. Now that tempers on both sides of the debate have cooled down somewhat, I thought I’d throw in my two cents on the whole thing.

The pic that caused all the controversy.

Firstly, anyone who knows me personally will know that I have a huge soft spot for animals. I always have, since I was a little child – so obviously this will colour my argument a tad. I will, however, attempt to maintain objectivity throughout this piece. I grew up in a house full of cats and dogs, had rats and hamsters as pets, and also spent a lot of time around a flock of semi-tame chickens (one or two of which were hand-reared and fully tame and, I might add, quite delightful and intelligent little creatures with unique personalities) at my grandmother’s house.

It may surprise some of you to learn that I have killed animals with a gun as well. You see, having a number of free-roaming cats in a garden full of bird life, lizards and rodents meant that there was a lot of hunting going on on the part of my feline friends. Now, cats are affectionate creatures (despite what ignorant people believe about them) and in return for you feeding them, they will also bring food to share with you. This meant that a lot of dead lizards, birds and rats and shrews were brought into our house by our cats. Well, some were dead, and some were badly wounded. A lesson I learned early on from my father was that sometimes killing is a necessary evil. I remember one of our cats bringing in a mouse from the garden one afternoon. I was perhaps six or seven years old. I still remember how the little creature lay on the cold linoleum of the kitchen floor, spattered with blood, with patches of its fur matted and thick with the cat’s saliva. It was panting in great, heaving gasps. Flecks of blood clung to its tiny, yellowed rodent incisors. Its beady black eyes were bulging with raw terror.
“It’ll be okay, won’t it dad?” I asked my father.

He looked down at the little creature and shook his head sadly.

“It won’t, Jonny.”

“But… can’t we just put it back in the garden? It’ll get better, right?”

“I’m sorry my boy. It’s dying. It’ll be kinder to put it out of its misery. Take it out to the garden while I get the pellet gun.”

Using a paper towel, I gingerly scooped up the tiny creature. It did not struggle, nor did it try to escape. I could feel its heartbeat through the paper, and the warmth of its body melded with the heat of my cupped hands around it. I understood then that this thing was like me, in a way – in that it was not just a thing. It was an entity with its own will, with its own consciousness, with its own desire to live, to exist in peace. Nonetheless, I was powerless to help it. I did as I was told and took it out to the back garden and lay it down near the drain from the kitchen.

My father came out a few moments later with his pellet gun. He loaded the weapon with a lead pellet, placed the muzzle of the gun against the mouse’s skull, and pulled the trigger.

Blood, shattered bits of skull and globs of brain sprayed out in all directions, scattered by the pellet’s violent velocity. The mouse’s legs curled up into its body and it released a final breath of air from its lungs.

Death, I suppose, came as a release and a final comfort to the creature. But it was ugly. It was tragic. I cried my eyes out and was inconsolable for quite some time after that. Most children have a naïve wonder and fascination for animals, from great to small, and seeing violence wrought upon an animal causes immense distress to the young mind. Unless, of course, that young mind is hardened to it and taught that violence is right, necessary and indeed desirable and worthy of praise.

When I became an adult, the responsibility to put the occasional animal out of its misery (at the hands of our cats) would sometimes be mine. I put pellets through the skulls of a handful of dying birds and rodents that had been mangled at the hands (paws and jaws) of our cats, to give them the mercy of a quick death rather than a slow, lingering and painful one. It never became any easier over the years – death by violence remained an ugly and traumatic experience. The point of mentioning this is to emphasise that along with my love for animals, I also have firsthand experience of killing them with guns. Now let’s get on to the subject of the internet opinion war started by Melissa Bach’s lion hunting pictures.

Another post-hunt pic that stirred up some debate on the internet.

First there were the knee-jerk, reactionary cries of outrage and disgust at Bach’s picture – her gloating smile as she stood over the corpse of the once-majestic beast. The cries of rage and hate and revulsion spread with the fury of a winter bushfire across all manner of social networks came from the Knee-jerk Reactionaries. In spite of what critics who came to the debate later would say, such reactions are understandable – despite the bubbles of willful ignorance that most of us surround ourselves with, it is hard not to be aware of the fact that most species of wildlife on the planet are endangered, and to see someone with a gloating smile posing next to a majestic beast that she killed for nothing but the pure pleasure of the act of violence, especially when we know of the declining numbers of these wild animals, will stir up a negative reaction in anyone who possesses even the slightest bit of empathy for other living creatures.

After a few days of outrage, the counter-attacks began to arrive – posts from The Smug. We see The Smug in all manner of internet debates and social media phenomena. The Knee-jerk Reactionaries and The Smug are mortal enemies in the realm of the ‘web; the KR post immediate gut reactions, which are usually of an extreme variety, leading to TS getting annoyed with the volume of posting, and thus posting their own “carefully-thought-out” case which (supposedly) completely refutes and nullifies the position of the KR. I put “carefully-thought-out” in inverted commas because it is seldom actually the case that their arguments are carefully-though-out. Often they contain massive holes and are just as incomplete and unconvincing as the KR’s positions, yet they are posited in a manner that can only be described as smug (hence the moniker I have assigned them).

In this particular case, The Smug reaction has been something along the lines of “listen, you bleedin’ heart ignoramuses, you know absolutely nothing about the reality of hunting and conservation, so here are a number of figures and statistics that show that without trophy hunting, most wild animals would quickly become extinct, there would be widespread habitat destruction, millions of rural Africans would starve to death in abject poverty and entire countries’ economies would collapse. Oh, and you buy meat from the supermarket so you’re just as guilty as Bach of cruelty to animals. So leave these noble hunters and these pious and humble game ranchers alone – you may not like what they do but they are the actual knights-in-shining-armour of wildlife conservation.”

Needless to say this position is just as shaky as that of the Knee-jerkers. About the only thing I can agree with in that statement is the notion regarding buying meat from supermarkets, but that is a topic for another debate.

Now how can you call this position “shaky”, I hear you ask. “These guys have got the facts and figures to back them up! It’s clear, from statistics (and the unshakeable faith in which we have in these numbers), that the wild would destroy itself if it weren’t for the benevolent care of hunting ranches and the gargantuan wallets of the foreign hunters who patronise them. Here are the figures detailing elephant and lion populations in South Africa from the 1960s, when hunting had been severely restricted, compared to now, when X population is thriving and this much land is in perfect balance solely because of legalised hunting and population control, etc etc.”

Fine. We can agree that in a way, trophy hunting has contributed enormously to conservation in the past few decades. But before that – why were populations of most major wild mammals in South Africa nearing the brink of extinction by 1960? Because they had been hunted to damn near extinction by sport and trophy hunters. Have we so quickly forgotten the quagga? The Cape Lion? The Blue Buck? These were all hunted to extinction in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This is a pattern that we have seen repeated throughout history, all over the world. What happened to the United Kingdom’s wolves and bears? They were hunted to extinction on that grey isle. What of the once-vast herds of bison that once roamed the plains of North America, that were almost utterly wiped out by sport hunters? Now, don’t think that I am laying the blame for this squarely at the feet of trophy hunters – farming, deforestation and general destruction of wild habitat for the purpose of expanding human settlements, agriculture and industry has probably been the major cause of the extinction of megafauna over the past few centuries and has pushed certain species into critically endangered status – tigers, clouded leopards, orangutans and rhinoceroses in East and Southeast Asia are some examples that spring immediately to mind. However, let us not forget that in terms of wildlife in South Africa, the very people who The Smug currently wishes to portray as the benevolent saviours of wildlife were the ones who almost brought about the complete annihilation of many species that are currently endangered – for the mere pleasure of using firearms to kill things.

While I never hunted anything myself, I do know of the savage thrill of seeing a bullet you fired wreaking destruction upon a target; I participated in rifle shooting at school for a few years, and at home there was always a pellet gun or two lying around. Yet for me, for all of us in our group of friends in fact, using these weapons on a living being was a line that was not to be crossed, indeed, it was one that none of us couldfathom crossing. However, I knew boys at school who did take a delight in killing an maiming creatures with their pellet guns. I still remember a boy telling a group of us, and laughing about the whole act, of how he had shot a tree agama (a type of large, tree-dwelling lizard) to death in as slow and a cruel a manner as he could (shooting off the limbs one by one, etc). Just hearing him gloat with pride about such vile cruelty made me very sad, and disgusted, even at that young age (I think we were around 9 years old). Another boy I knew was taken on hunts with real firearms from an early age by his father, and he used to proudly boast of the cruelty he inflicted on animals with his father’s guns (like the other boy I mentioned, this one also seemed to take vicious delight in maiming the animals and blowing their body parts off and seeing them suffer a long and painful death). In light of these tales, I never forgot the killing of that mouse – how a being that was once alive, a being that once experienced consciousness via the same conduits that I did (the five senses), and which possessed that same mammalian brain that I possessed with which to interpret the data fed to it via those senses – how that being’s existence and consciousness was ended with the ugliness and brutality of violence.

For another extremely important lesson was taught to me, by my grandmothers and my parents – “do unto others as you would have done unto you”. For us, in our family, the definition of others did not exclude the citizens of the animal kingdom, and this was something that stuck with me from the time I was very young, and something which I have never forgotten. Thus, I could not (and still cannot) fathom wherein lies the pleasure in wreaking violence upon another living being – I see too much of myself, my friends, and my family in the eyes of another living entity to do it unnecessary harm. And I think that killing a creature purely for the sake of sport and entertainment certainly constitutes “unnecessary harm”. However, I don’t want to get into the moral debate about killing for sport, pleasure, convenience or food right now – I’m already going off on a tangent here.

To return to the hunting-as-conservation argument,one only has to look at the pages of any history book about pre-20th century South Africa to find endless accounts of a vast country, teeming with life– both flora and fauna – life that existed in a perfect ecological balance, as it had for millennia. All of the megafauna that once thrived in this country, indeed, on this continent and others, had existed there in a yin-yang harmony for far longer than our species has existed upon this earth. With all these statistics being bandied about regarding the devastation of landscapes by the “uncontrollable excesses” of elephant herds or lions “overhunting” certain species of antelope and putting their population numbers at risk, one has to wonder how these creatures managed to, you know, not cause each other (and the plants and trees too) to go extinct in the millions of years that they roamed free on this continent (and other continents), while we were still in the half-monkey stage of evolution (and thus couldn’t manage the wilds)… How did they get by without destroying everything?! Now, when he/she realises the direction I’m taking with this line of thought, I’m sure some smart-arse is going to point out the mass extinctions that have occurred without the hand of humanity being involved, long before we were walking upright. “Can you say d-i-n-o-s-a-u-r-s, Jon?” Yes I can, and I hope, for your sake, that that’s not your trump card – because a mass extinction is occurring in our epoch – the epoch of civilisation – at a rate that is between ten and one hundred times faster than has ever before happened in our planet’s history, according to some theorists. The dinosaurs were wiped out in a once-off cataclysmic event – an enormous meteor strike, the most popular theory states. Yet here we are – doing just as lethal a job (perhaps at not quite as fast a rate, but close) as the enormous meteorite that erased the existence of those reptilian behemoths from this planet.

The now-extinct quagga.

This period of greatly accelerated extinction which we are part of, The Holocene, started roughly 10 or 11 000 years ago (and coincided with the proliferation of humans and the beginnings of human civilisation) and is the sixth mass extinction event in our planet’s known history. A number of theories abound regarding the cause of the first wave of extinctions (at the start of the Holocene) and many are to do with the role played by climate change – but others also posit that the arrival of humans, with their settlements, spears and arrows, coincides quite clearly with the disappearance of megafauna such as the woolly mammoth, cave lions, cave bears and other megafauna. The second wave of mass extinctions in the Holocene has occurred in the past few centuries and is absolutely and undeniably anthropogenic.

The point I’m trying to make here is that the argument that commercial trophy hunting is what is keeping conservation in South Africa (and on other places) afloat and that without it, we’d lose countless species and usher in mass unemployment and colossal ecological damage, is sympotamic of a greater problem – our attitude towards nature. As can clearly be seen when we look at the greater context of the Holocene Extinction and the last 10 000 years of human impact upon the natural world, we have been, on the whole, takers and not givers. Our attitude is wherein the core of the problem lies; the whole hunting-as-conservation thing is working because of the money involved – because the bottom line, as it has been for a long time, is profit, profit, profit. We see the wilds as a resource, as something that is there with the sole purpose of benefiting us in some way. There is no notion of “perhaps we’ve taken enough from the wilds… Perhaps we should let them return to the state of harmony they had existed in for the millions of years before our intervention in their functioning”. The prevalent thought is this: “here is some land. It must be used to generate profit in some manner. Agriculture? This land is not suitable… But we must have economic growth! Wild animals? How can we most profitably use them – through charging tourists a handful of change to take photographs of them, or by charging tourists suitcases full of hundred dollar bills to kill them and then take photographs of them?” It is easy to see which is the more profitable venture. But even if it is working in the short term (and the short term can be anything from a few decades to a century), it is merely putting a band-aid on a great festering wound that lies beneath. And like an infected wound, if you merely mask it and do not treat the underlying infection, the infection will continue to spread and increase in severity until it kills the organism – even if you cannot see this corruption happening beneath the screen of the band-aid.

We are very quick to point out that overseas tourists who arrive in South Africa with suitcases full of money with which to pay to kill a wild animal for fun in an enterprise that employs hundreds of impoverished individuals, and that it works very favorably in an economic sense. Yet we are reluctant to ask why this should be the case, why this paradigm is dominant. Why is it that we live in a world where a tiny minority of people are so overflowing with material wealth that they can travel to distant lands on a whim and pay huge sums of money to kill something for the mere pleasure of inflicting violence (to kill one lion apparently costs in the region of US$30, 000 – which is way more money than any of those working class individuals who do the tracking and chasing of the animals would ever see or accumulate in their entire lives) yet a majority struggle to simply put food on the table for their families from day to day? Why is it such a given that absolutely every square inch of land has to be seen in terms of what we can take from it, how it can generate profit? It should be obvious to any student of history and ecology, indeed, to any reasonably minded and compassionate individual, that the infinite growth economic paradigm which rules the global economy is utterly unsustainable on a planet of finite resources, and that promoting such wasteful activities as killing for pleasure, regardless of how economically successful they are is bringing the wilds and indeed the entire planet, whether we are talking of inhabited and developed spaces or not, to the brink of destruction.

I realise that I’ve probably raised more questions than provided solutions here, but I don’t believe that people often look at the whole debate in this light. We need to look beyond the simplest parameters and parties involved and try to assess such activity in the light of developing attitudes of compassion, empathy and long-term sustainability. Promoting activities that are inherently violent and destructive for reasons of economic success is, as I mentioned before, merely putting a band-aid over a festering infected wound that will kill its host off completely if left untreated. We need an entirely new system, a completely fresh paradigm – one that is no longer constructed on elevating base sensory pleasures and consumption and taking, taking, taking from the natural world. Without such a vision, there will be nothing but more mass extinctions, enormous habitat destruction and ultimate destruction of most megafauna (our own species included) upon this planet..

A title is often misleading, and if you were hoping that this post was going to be about gun control, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I may decide to write on that particular topic another time, but not today. The weapon I want to discuss today is a far more universal one than a 9mm pistol or an AK-47 assault rifle – as ubiquitous as the Kalashnikov has become in almost every third-world country and former communist nation on earth, it’s still not as prolific as the weapon I’m going talk about in this entry. This weapon is legal in every country on earth; in fact if you don’t own one, you’re probably seen as weird, disorganised or just plain down-and-out.

What is this deadly side-arm of which I speak? Simple: a wallet.

“Wait, what? A wallet is a weapon? How does that make any sense?” I hear you asking. Well, let’s look at what constitutes the definition of a weapon. I’m sure everyone agrees that objects that are designed to inflict wounds, such as guns, swords and knives, can be unequivocally defined as weapons. Yet, a baseball bat can be as deadly a weapon as a sword. A broken bottle could inflict a fatal stab wound. These objects, whilst not designed as weapons, can easily be used as weapons. “Well, that doesn’t require much of a stretch of the imagination to see,” you say. “But a wallet? It’s small, soft – it wouldn’t do any damage if you hit someone with it!”

Of course, that’s true – you couldn’t possibly kill or seriously maim someone with an object like a wallet. However, in order to illustrate my point, I’d like to explore the notion of violence, and then, more specifically, chains of violence. First, let’s look at a hypothetical case, in which we have two fictitious characters – Tim and Bob. Tim is a small, slightly-built fellow who by nature is repulsed by the sight of blood. However, his squeamishness and weak muscles do not preclude him from having a cruel nature; he is a rich, extremely successful cut-throat businessman who has not an ounce of moral integrity to his name and no conscience whatsoever. The violence he commits is in contracts and ledgers.

One day Tim discovers that his wife has been having an affair. Enraged, he decides that she and her lover must die. However, due to his weak stomach and spindly limbs (his wife’s lover is a strong, athletic fellow) he cannot do the deed himself. Enter Bob. Bob is a tall, burly thug with minimal intelligence a penchant for brutality. He gladly accepts payment from Tim to bludgeon the hapless woman and her lover to death with a sledgehammer.

The deed is done. Two people lie dead, their bones broken and skulls crushed by Bob’s deftly-swung sledgehammer. Bob and Tim are both guilty of murder, in the eyes of the law. But who is more guilty out of the two?

I think most people would agree that while Bob is certainly guilty of committing the vile act, the blame for the murder falls upon Tim. Without Tim’s desire to have his wife and her lover killed, there would have been no murders. Bob would have had no reason to attack them without being instructed to do so by Tim, so they would still be alive and unharmed.

This is where I would like to introduce the concept of a chain of violence. Now, first, what is a chain? It is a single strand composed of many interconnected links. If even one link breaks, the whole chain is rendered useless and destroyed. So, in this case, we must agree that every link, wherever it is on the chain, is essential to the integrity of the chain as a whole. When one link breaks, the entire chain is broken. This concept is key to what I’m trying to illustrate.

In the case of Tim and Bob, the chain is a very short one, consisting of only two links. However, each is nonetheless vital to the integrity of the chain; without Tim’s desire to kill his wife, there would have been no murder. Also, without Bob’s willingness to kill the woman, there would have been no murder (none immediately anyway, until Tim had found someone who was willing to do the deed).

Now, in order to expand on the chain concept a little, let’s redo the Bob and Tim scenario with a few more characters. In this scenario (and let’s say that this happens somewhere in the United States), Tim doesn’t know Bob. In fact, he doesn’t know anyone who would be willing to kill his wife. However, he is a frequent visitor to a seedy strip club owned by a mafioso. He is on very good terms with the bouncers there and one of them, Chris, says that he will put in a word for Tim with Tony, the gangster who owns the club. Tony regularly makes use of contract killers himself, but is wary of getting one of his regular guys to help Tim in case it goes wrong and he is implicated and imprisoned. However, he is eager to take a cut of the large sum of money that Tim is offering, so he calls his friend Jeff, who specialises in human trafficking from Eastern Europe. He asks Jeff to source him a brutal thug who is willing to kill two strangers in exchange for being smuggled into the USA with a forged American passport, along with a small sum of cash. Jeff does some searching and comes across Bob, who is willing and able to do the deed. Bob is smuggled into the US, gets his sledgehammer and instructions from Jeff, and commits the murders.

Now the chain looks like this: Tim > Chris > Tony > Jeff > Bob. Again, let’s ask the same question: Who is most guilty in this scenario? All of the links in the chain bear some guilt for the murder of the two people; if we removed any one of the links from the chain, it would be broken and there would be no murder. Correct? Yet again, despite the length of this chain and the great distance between Tim and Bob (neither of whom are even aware of the other’s existence), the ultimate blame for the murder still sits squarely upon Tim’s shoulders – for again, without his desire to kill his wife and her lover, there would have been no reason for Bob to commit those murders.

“So what the hell does this all have to do with wallets?” I hear you ask. “Sure, we all have them, we all use them every day, but none of us know any mob bosses or contract killers! This is ridiculous!” you protest. But is it? How aware are we of the chains of violence in which we are the links, in which our desires provide the motive (just as Tim provided the motive in the murder scenario) for others to commit violence on our behalf at the other end of the chain?

It is obvious to anyone who even makes the slightest scratch through the shiny “ain’t life swell!” veneer of modern urban life, that our lifestyles are utterly destroying the planet upon which we reside, and are the cause of untold suffering, brutality, pollution and destruction. The oceans are choked with plastic waste and will be effectively dead and devoid of life by 2048. Read that sentence again, a few times, and allow the implications of it to actually set in. “That’s terrible!” you gasp. “Someone should stop those bastards!”. We kill 150 BILLION animals a year to satisfy our cravings for meat, dairy and eggs. I don’t think the human mind can accurately envision that number, but trust me, it’s enormous; literally, as I’ve just said, beyond comprehension. What’s more the vast majority of those 150 billion unfortunate creatures, who are slaughtered for the sole purpose of convenience and our pleasure, spend their ENTIRE lives, from birth to slaughter, never seeing the sun, breathing fresh air, for many not even being able to MOVE within the confines of their cages. They are treated with hatred, brutality, cruelty sadistic malice and callous indifference from the moment their lives begin until finally death releases them from this hellish existence. They are not shown an ounce of kindness, love or compassion.

And we are an integral link in the chain of violence at the end of which they are the victims – it is because of our link in that chain, our desire to consume their bodies and secretions that they are brought into this world. The livestock industry is a greater carbon emitter than all of the transport industries on the planet combined. The grain and soybeans used to feed and fatten these animals requires the clearing of vast tracts of land. Jungles, rain-forests and old-growth forests, which have covered the earth for millions of years and served as its lungs, its purifying air filter, are hacked down to make way for grazing land or to grow feed for animals in feedlots.

In South-East Asia rainforests are being destroyed in vast swathes to make way for palm plantations, to produce palm oil. Again, this destroys the earth’s lungs and is leading to the extinction of numerous species.

Our addiction to oil and plastic products has lead us to the point where massively destructive methods of extraction such as tar sands and fracking are coming to the forefront of oil sourcing.

In the third world millions of underaged workers, and indeed entire families, live and labour in conditions almost as bad as the chattel slaves experienced two hundred years ago on plantations and farms in the New World – yet these slaves (indentured labourers is the preferred euphemism, I believe) work in factories that produce our brand-name (and non-brand name) running shoes, athletic wear and technological products.

Before anyone jumps on me, yes, I am aware of the hypocrisy and bitter irony of the fact that I’m typing this on a product of this system.

Links in the chain – who is to blame? Remember Tim.

Let’s not stop there – what about resource mines that reduce entire mountains, valleys and other former wild landscapes to barren rubble to source the minerals from which our leisure products are made? Diamond industries that line the pockets of savage warlords who massacre families and force children into soldierhood and/or sexual slavery? Soft drink giants who are taking over streams and other fresh water sources in third world nations to source their bottled water, shamelessly depriving the poor of the single most important element (besides air to breathe) necessary for survival?

Most of the things that are produced by these rapacious, exploitative and immensely destructive industries are not necessities – they are luxuries. We can quite easily live without them, and indeed we can live far more healthy and fulfilling lives when we have weaned ourselves off of these addictive products and freed our minds from the consumption=happiness ideology that is forced down our throats 24/7 by those who profit from the destruction of the wilds, the enslavement and mass slaughter of billions of sentient beings, the plundering of our oceans and the exploitation of the poor in the third world.

Remember Tim.

Before you assume, however, that this post is entirely pessimistic/accusatory/judgmental/damning, let me make one more important point. While a wallet can be a weapon, a weapon that is an integral link in the chains of violence that I have talked about above, it can also be used for good. The whole point of this diatribe has been to illustrate personal complicity in systems of destruction, cruelty, barbarism, exploitation and greed – but remember, we have just as much power to say NO when we make a purchase. In fact, the act of defying society’s norms, awakening from a state of apathy, and refusing to continue to participate in the systems of exploitation and brutality that have been sold to us and forced down our throats as “normal and desirable” since birth is an act of massive power and defiance, akin to hurling a mass of hand grenades into the massed ranks of the enemy. Remember, every time we pull out our wallets and hand over a stack of notes or handful of coins, we are firing bullets. These bullets travel along a chain, as I have illustrated – but they need not be the chains of violence.

When we choose NOT to buy products that come from systems of exploitation and brutality and wanton destruction, and instead buy products that come from sources that espouse values of sustainability, kindness and compassion, we are like soldiers throwing down our guns and walking away from battle. There are no generals forcing us into the wars against nature, animals, the poor citizens of third world nations and the environment, these wars that we are unwittingly funding. We will not be court-martialled if we desert. And every “deserter” weakens the armies of destruction and exploitation, and for every soul who deserts these systems and crosses over to the side of peace, sustainability, forethought and compassion, a small victory is won. It may seem tiny and insignificant, but what is an ocean but a collection of tiny drops?

The time has come to awaken from the stupor of apathy, to throw down your weapons and desert the armies of the oppressor, and to make choices every day that say yes for good and no to evil. This is the only way that the war will be won: from the ground up. Always remember – we ARE the ground, we are the soldiers holding the weapons, and we have immense power in EVERY single choice we make.

one of my favorite childhood photos – little me with my father on his bike.

The camera is one of the most remarkable innovations of the last few centuries; perhaps not in its technical complexity (or lack thereof), compared to other inventions, or in its impact on matters we consider of primary importance (industrialised crop production to feed the urbanised masses, the discoveries of various vaccines and medicines against the microbes and viruses that used to decimate our species, etc etc). However, in its absolutely unique ability to capture and store, fairly indefinitely, a moment of the fleeting present in a physically accessible, tangible medium, it is unparalleled in history.

Before the photograph came along, the present remained a realm of complete inattainability; we lived through it, experiencing it constantly, but the precise details of it could never be recalled; they were coloured, shaded and contorted by the unreliable puppet-master, Memory, with his arthritic fingers and shaky hands. It was also a realm of utter loneliness; of course, it still is, and always will be, for our own experiences of interacting with the world and each other remain indescribable in their entirety to anyone but ourselves. However, with the photograph, we are able to preserve, exactly as it would have appeared to multiple, objective observers, a singular moment of space and time. Through the medium of the photograph, we can see, in almost identical detail, how the reflections of light that make up our visual experience of this world look through the eyes of another human being.

The consequences of this are profound – mostly, for me anyway, in that we can see the faces of the dead, as they were decades (or even centuries ago), as their friends and loved ones, as well as rivals and enemies, would have seen them. Somehow, through the miracle of a chemical reaction to the mystically transcendent medium of light, we can capture how the human eye perceives reality and transfer it onto a two-dimensional surface. Hamlet needed a skull to enhance his childhood recollections of the long-dead Yorick, and even with the physical remains of what used to be the man held in his fingers, how accurate would his mental image have been? How could he possibly have communicated this image to his peers in any manner as physically accurate as a photograph would have conveyed it? As a writer, and an avid reader, I am acutely aware of the power of words, sentences and descriptions to evoke a place, a person, a scene, a mood – yet at the same time, there is little that can rival the photograph in its ability to capture a single slice of physical time.

This musing on the evocative and sometimes almost sacred nature of photographs leads me to the point I wish to discuss, as evinced in the title of this post: the devaluation of the photograph. Photography had always been a fairly expensive pastime; one needed both a camera and film, which was costly in itself and required the services of a specialist to develop. Now, before any of you digital guys get riled up and offended, please don’t think that this post is intended to be an attack on digital photography – it’s not. Digital photography is a realm of infinite possibility, and for those who have an artistic eye, the medium is incredible in its potential for diversity. My father, one of whose lifelong passions has been photography (particularly wildlife photography, in which his skills are incredible) has embraced digital photography with wholehearted enthusiasm, despite his advanced years.

Yet, simultaneously, the spread of camera technology to the general masses, most specifically by the proliferation of cellphone cameras, has lead to a cheapening of the art form, both in a literal and figurative sense. We no longer need to buy film to take pictures – we can store thousands on the memory cards of our digital cameras and print any number of them from our home printers. We no longer need a darkroom to manipulate photographic images – anyone with even the most moderate computer skills can do this digitally. And in this mass democratisation of photography, something of the value once inherent in its processes has become lost.

images like these iconic rock photographs needed impeccable timing, dedication to the craft and more than a little luck to attain.

Because of the cost of film in a now-lost era, care had to be taken in image selection. You couldn’t just point your lens at any old thing and snap away with abandon – you only had 24, or sometimes 12, if I remember correctly, shots in your reel. You had to choose what you were going to shoot very carefully, because that film wasn’t cheap and neither were the fees to develop it. Now, you want to take fifty pictures of that convenience store salad you’re about to eat on a plastic table – sure, why not? After all, who wouldn’t want to see an image of such magnificent profundity? You and your friends go out and get smashed in the local pub – get those cellphone cameras snapping away! Everyone is very interested in the sixty-eight shaky, half-blurred shots of you guys smiling and laughing drunkenly that will be uploaded to your favorite social network the next day!

I think that in the last two years, more pictures have been taken of me than those that exist of me throughout the entire span of my life since birth. In one particular instance, a rather snap-happy gentleman took and uploaded perhaps forty or fifty shots of me drumming (and at least half of these were random shots of me staring into space between songs, drinking water, and other such inconsequential minutae). What, precisely, is the point of such an exercise? Have we collectively begun to assume such a sense of narcissistic self-importance (and the topic of everyday narcissism that is disseminated, enabled and reinforced through visual-heavy social media will be the topic of another blog post entirely) that we feel that it is utterly necessary to photographically document and share every arbitrary and banal detail of our existences with even the most casual of acquaintances?

According to this blog post approximately 85 billion photographs were taken from the time of the invention of the photograph up until the year 2000. Now, 3.5 trillion photos exist – and 10% of those were taken just last year! Now how many out of these pictures do you suppose were carefully thought out and profound images? Don’t get me wrong now; I’m not suggesting that every picture taken needs to be a work of art that touches on the sublime in some manner – there is a place for frivolousness, for light-heartedness, for whimsical images and candid snaps of friends at social gatherings. Indeed, I wish that digital cameras had been around when I was a child and teenager, so that I’d have more pictures of those long past years (all I have now, of my teenage years especially, are memories – I can count on one hand the number of photos of me as a teen that exist today). I have to rely on my memory to conjure up images of how my friends looked in the 80s and 90s, but I suppose there is something of value in that as well – for one thing, it keeps the old cognitive gears oiled and allows me to wallow in the golden half-light of nostalgic recollection every once in a while.

I’d be stoked if a photo existed of all of us together instead of just this cartoon…

I do also wish that I’d had the foresight to take some actual film photographs of my friends back then. We were a tight-knit crew, my teenage buddies and I, and I often sit and think of the times we shared and the mischief we got up to. I feel that this experience would be greatly enhanced if I could hold a photograph in my hands and see how the light danced on our youthful features, once upon in a time, in a present that has long since faded from this plane of reality. Alas, the magnificence of youth was wasted on me, who had not the foresight to photographically document the multitude of shenanigans in which my friends and I engaged. Or – was it really wasted, just because there is no photographic evidence to document those days? Certainly, they have evaporated into the aether of the past now, and there is nothing but the intangible and malleable notion of a set of memories floating around in our heads, but does that necessarily change the inherent value of those past experiences?

I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t take for granted the fact that we have the technological means to capture a single moment, in all its fleeting glory, and transfer it to a medium in which it will be effectively frozen and stored indefinitely, BUT, don’t abuse it either. There is no need to overload an already massively-saturated virtual arena with images of banality and tedium. Try to recall the sacredness of the ritual of pulling out an old photo album, dusting it off and paging through it, feeling the slickness of the protective film on your fingertips and the overly sharp corners of the hard pages as you lean back in your easy chair and lose yourself in the memories that the images bring flooding through your mind. Appreciate the fact that you can capture a slice of the fleeting present, and freeze-protect it forever against the ravages of time. Capture moments of love and joy and friendship, and treasure them. Maybe save the 7-11 meals and half-blurred nightclub shots for your memory…

“I speak to good, decent people all around the world. And they all genuinely want to change the world – as long as they don’t have to change themselves. But life doesn’t work that way – first, we change in our hearts, and then, the world follows. True leaders must face their own demons courageously.”– Philip Wollen, philanthropist.

If there’s one thing that’s hard to deny about the age of The Internet and Portable Communication/Entertainment devices, it’s that it’s made us more lazy on the whole, and arguably more apathetic about the world around us. I can imagine that certain people are spitting coffee all over their keyboards right about now in a spray of indignant rage; “how can he possibly suggest such a thing!? Is that some of that rose-tinted (and btw, rather trite and pathetic) 80s and 90s nostalgia putting blinkers over the cataract-milky eyes of this old geezer?” Well before you scroll down to the comments section and unleash a dungpile of your finest trollage upon me for daring to suggest such a thing, please allow me my five minutes on the soap box.

The all-in-one Idiocracy chair, coming soon to all apathetic households.

Now, why would I suggest that the internet has made us (and by “us” I’m referring to the largely-Western citizens of the global digital landscape, not third world peasants with no access to this virtual landscape of bits and bytes) more apathetic on the whole? I make this bold statement, and it’s important to note the following point, people, in relative terms.

What I mean by that is precisely the fact that most article-skipping trolls will most likely have posted by the time you, the decent and polite reader, have reached this point: that humankind now, more than ever in recorded human history, has collective, instant and largely unrestricted access to more information about the past and present states of every single culture in the world than has ever before been made available to the common person.

We have the means at our fingertips, and you can take that in both figurative and completely literal terms if you want, to find out almost anything imaginable about the world. Google, wikipedia, youtube; these are, at least for me, the “big three”names in online information-seeking media, and with these three tools you’d be hard-pressed to name a subject upon which you couldn’t find heaps upon heaps of articles, critiques, analyses, exposés, essays and opinions ad infinitum.

Now while much of this content revolves around things of a rather inconsequential nature, there are vast reserves of online knowledge specifically pertaining to important academic fields such as science, politics, economics, medicine, history, biology, astrophysics, as well as a proliferation of equally important areas of the Arts, including fine art itself, literature, music, anthropology, cultural and gender studies, philosophy, psychology, film and other such areas of vital intellectual interest. In short, we have the means to thoroughly educate ourselves and expand our minds in an overwhelmingly vast array of fields of knowledge; the only limiting factor here is the individual’s capacity to absorb, analyse and retain whatever knowledge they decide to ingest.

Let me repeat this again: Never before, in the (roughly) ten thousand years of humankind’s span of civilised history has such a degree of knowledge been available to all as there has been within the last ten years or so.

Yet, how many of us make a daily, weekly or even monthly effort to access, analyse and digest even the most minute fraction of the monumental universe of knowledge that is freely available to us?

The point I’m trying to make in mentioning the vastness and comprehensiveness of information available to everyone relates to the founding principles of our postmodern, hyperglobal consumerist society: exploitation and unsustainability. Almost every industry around which our lifestyles of convenience and unquestioning consumption revolve is based on the plundering of some non-renewable resource (oil, for example), or cheaply exploitable but morally reprehensible source (massive exploitation of animals, exploitation of millions of third world poverty-stricken humans, including children, the wide-scale annihilation of the natural environment, the trawling of the oceans, etc etc).

Now, in the decades that preceded the 00s and the advent of global internet accessibility, it was relatively easy for those in power, the ones in charge of and profiting handsomely from industries dependent on massive exploitation and destruction, to keep the wool pulled over the eyes of the general citizenry, in whose hands the actual power rests (the power of participating in, or refusing to participate in certain areas of the economy). There was no youtube, no google, and no social networks like facebook upon which ideas could be shared and spread, with the rapidity and fury of a bushfire, across the expanse of the earth, transcending barriers of culture, language, nationality and socio-economic status. Documentaries, articles, books and opinion pieces that exposed the truth about the horrors of factory farming, sweatshops, the destruction of the rain forests, the extinction of millions of species of wildlife, resource wars in the third world, the dying oceans, etc, would have had to be actively sought out by those few individuals who were concerned enough to do so. Such materials would have been relegated to the “alternative thinking” or “New Age philosophy” section of independent bookstores, and in addition to being almost invisible in their physical placement they would have carried the stigma of those labels under which they were listed, which the exploiters have done such an excellent PR job of ridiculing, with public perception thereof being almost universally that of cranks, “dirty hippies”, crazed fringe lunatics, well-meaning but utterly ignorant and misinformed middle-aged-women, con-running charlatans, LSD-burned ex addicts, and all of the other false stereotypes associated with such labels.

Thus it was to be expected that in the pre-internet age, the majority of us, even the most erudite critical thinkers, would merely accept that the way our society functions as being good, right and wholly normal. We could not be blamed for harboring a complete disconnect with reality, because the means to expose that reality for what actually lay veiled beyond the curtain of the mundane, which consists of a series of horrific and monstrous systems of terror, destruction and exploitation, were simply not widely and freely available to us.

However, with the advent of The Web, this has changed completely. We can now see the truth of what forms the foundations of the pyramid upon which we totteringly sway, so sure of ourselves as the rightful Pharaohs of the universe, even as the base crumbles and gives way to the gaping maw of the ocean of desolation that is about to swallow everything. The Truth is but a mouse click away, for those that would discover it. And surely, we all want to know about issues so important that the very survival of our species utterly depends on it?

Morpheus is real, and his name is The Internet.

With that question in mind, let’s move on to the topic of “slacktivism”.

So, we’ve established that we have all of the information necessary to expose the Truth about the systems of horror and destruction that our lifestyles continue to fuel. We can learn as much as we want about dire and pressing issues that affect every single one of us and hold the very future of the planet and all life upon it in the balance.

But do we care?

We like to think we do. This is where “slacktivism” comes in. The term “slacktivist” came into use sometime in the mid-90s, apparently, and what it refers to is the usually very minor actions that an individual undertakes in support of a some distant cause. This could be something like “liking” a page on facebook, the online sharing of a video that promotes some cause, or perhaps signing one’s name on an internet petition. Less “passive” forms of slacktivism would be making credit card donations to a particular cause online, or in the real world, dropping some coins into a collection box for a charity or social justice cause.

Now let me say that in terms of what I have just described, slacktivism is not actually a bad thing. I am guilty of all of the abovementioned actions; yes, I too am a slacktivist when it comes to certain issues. I am not trying, in this article, to suggest that slactivism is useless. In fact, slactivism has actually achieved some pretty monumental things, which you can take note of if you peruse the following infographic.

However, the point I want to make about slactivism is that it’s not enough. While it has succeeded in making small positive changes around the world, it is not going to save us from the disaster we are speeding so recklessly and inevitably toward. It’s a temporary alleviation from extremely deep-seated feelings of guilt that, since birth, we have been conditioned to suppress way down to the furthest reaches of the subconscious mind. It’s a way of saying, “hey, look at me! I’m one of the good guys! I care about more than just myself!” But more than this, it’s yet another means of instant gratification in the age of instant gratification, (and the internet, with its online shopping, free downloads, streaming content, etc has massively amplified, reinforced and enabled a veritable epidemic of insta-grat cravings and addictions) and it’s another ineffectual shortcut in the era of ineffectual shortcuts; a failed promise from a slick internet salesman in exactly the same vein as “30-day sixpack abs, 1 minute a day, gauranteed!!!”.

The scary thing about slacktivism is the other side of the coin. While slacktivist actions are a quick-fix reflexive reaction that make a small difference and temporarily alleviate subconscious feelings of unease about our lifestyles and complicity in systems of mass violence and exploitation, they also reinforce apathetic and lazy behaviour in the individual. They strengthen the part of ourselves that is greedy, that is selfish, that is lazy, the side that does not want to change or make any kind of personal sacrifice for the greater good. And when this side of human nature is indirectly and subtly criticized or attacked, it reacts with its concomitant emotions: violence, anger, cynicism, sarcasm and mockery. What do I mean by “indirectly or subtly criticized or attacked”? This is when the individual is presented with an example of a person who is making considerable efforts to alter their lifestyle drastically, to make great personal sacrifices, to actively make changes in the world that will transform things for the better. This especially happens when such a person makes their efforts publicly known. The lazy or apathetic person sees such an individual, and through subconscious feelings of guilt regarding their own complicity or apathy, they react by attacking, mocking or vilifying that person’s lifestyle choices. After all, it’s easier and more satisfying to be an armchair critic and not have to do anything oneself to contribute to positive change in the world.

This relates to another reason for slacktivism being such a great feelgood prompt; we can “take action” on and make a noise in public about causes which are completely outside our sphere of experience, in which we are fairly certain that we have no instance of complicity at all. It’s a form of the age-old culturally-insular practice of defining the Other (whether this Other takes the form of people of other ethnic groups, tribal groups, religious groups, nationalities, etc etc is irrelevant here) via a negative comparison to our own group’s (perceived) moral superiority. Thus I often see people in my own online social circles (facebook news feed, for example) ranting about the evils of consuming shark-fin soup (usually Westerners who would never eat such a thing anyway, yet who in the same breath will post pics of the steak they had for dinner), the consumption of dog and cat meat in China (ditto), fur farms in Asia (ditto), or perhaps they will post about the traumatic effects of bullying in schools (a popular one doing the rounds now), or the hate spread by the Westboro Baptist Church, and accompanying this post will be something commenting on how enlightened they are because they “think religion is bullshit”. Or, perhaps the biggest one of last year – the Kony campaign.

Now don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying that these are things we shouldn’t be concerned about and that we shouldn’t be raising awareness about. Of course we should be spreading awareness about these injustices and contributing to bring an end to them. But the point, once again, is that this is not enough – not enough to create and undertake the kinds of drastic changes we need to exact to save global civilisation from itself.

Slactivism is counter-intuitive to this in a way, because while it does raise brief spates of awareness and activity related to (Other-ed) causes, it simultaneously fails to address those evils that we are completely complicit in in our own lifestyles, and creates a sensation of satisfaction, in the sense of “I’ve done my good deed for the day, I can go back to lazing about and being apathetic without any latent feelings of guilt to bother me”.

But as Philip Wollen says, this is not how the world works. We cannot allow ourselves to be lulled into complacent apathy by temporarily-alleviated feelings of having “made a difference” for the day via slacktivist actions. We need to delve deeper, and critically examine our own lifestyle choices and the way that they are contributing to a looming global environmental and ecological disaster. We need to figure out how we can CHANGE the way we live, the personal sacrifices that WE MUST make in order to genuinely exact change. As Rowdy Roddy Piper says in the cheesy but relevant 80s film They Live, we need to “put on the damn glasses!”. Except these magic glasses will not reveal that an alien race as the threat to our continued existence upon Earth. They will reveal the threat that we ourselves pose.

“Put on the damn glasses!” “Whooooaa…”How the magic glasses enable Roddy to see the world.

So where do we start looking if we genuinely want to wake up and start making a difference? How to we attempt to steer ourselves away from looming disaster? What do we need to change to move towards a more compassionate lifestyle that distances itself from greed, exploitation and apathy? Well, the first place we can look is in our refrigerators and on our dinner plates. Now while one can wax lyrical about the ethics (or lack thereof) of consuming meat and other animal products, (the main reason I myself eschew them is because of the utter horror, cruelty and and amorality of the conditions in which commercial livestock are raised and slaughtered), the bottom line is that most people just don’t care. We’ve all been raised to believe that animals are stupid, that they are incapable of even the most basic emotions, let alone complex thought processes such as empathising, planning for the future, learning and problem solving or acting with altrusim in ways that go against the “survival of the fittest” evolutionary paradigm, despite mounting and irrefutable scientific evidence to the contrary which states, in fact, that animals (including sheep, pigs, chickens and cattle) are way more emotionally complex and intelligent than we perceive them to be. If you are one of the handful of people reading this who might be interested in learning more about animal intelligence, here’s an excellent talk by animal scientist Jonathan Balcombe. Skip the cheesy intro and go to 4:10 for the talk.

However, if your cultural prejudices prevent you from seriously entertaining such notions despite the massive weight of the scientific evidence that supports assertions of animal intelligence, it is understandable, because it’s an extremely powerful set of deeply ingrained values that allow us to believe we are rightfully justified in exploiting animals for their meat and other products, so read on. I mean, you didn’t get to the top of the food chain to eat lettuce, right? (I can assure you though, if you were placed unarmed and naked, which is our natural state, in a cage with a lion, tiger, polar bear or other large predator, the “top of the food chain” chain myth would very quickly be dispelled). Eating or not eating meat is no longer merely a question of ethics and morals relating to animals. It has now become one of the most pressing issues related to the survival of humankind on this planet. And no, this information does not come from “bleedin’ heart bunny hugging” animal rights organisations or other such fringe groups that you can conveniently brush off as being well-meaning but ignorant fanatics and lunatics. No, this information comes from years of exhaustive, comprehensive research by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, whose damning report on the massive destruction caused by the global livestock industry directly correlates our appetite for meat with being one of the “major causes of the world’s most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.” The full report can be found here.

Our voracious collective appetite for fish and seafood is just as destructive and if it continues unabated, the world’s oceans, once thought to be an inexhaustible resource, may well be devoid of most life by 2048. Modern commerical trawling practices also cause massive destruction as they tear up the ocean bed and kill everything from turtles to dolphins along with the fish that they are actually trying to catch.

We also rely extremely heavily on non-renewable, finite resources such as oil and petrochemical products (including plastics, which are one of the worst polluters and destroyers of the environment), to fuel our lifestyles of laziness, instant gratification and convenience, not giving even a moment’s thought to the destruction it causes or how unsustainable such a dependency is. We waste fresh water with abandon, treating it as if it were some infinitely-available commodity, rather than something which may well run dry and cause the greatest ecological crisis in human history within our lifetimes. (Just to return briefly to the meat thing, the livestock industry is one of the greatest water wasters on the planet, as well as being one of the biggest polluters of streams and rivers.) We waste electricity daily, not paying any thought to the fact that it mostly comes from the burning of coal and other non-renewable and heavily-polluting fossil fuels. And the saddest thing about all of these wasteful behaviors is that we believe that it is our inherent right to act in this manner, and that any alternative would result in an unacceptably egregious reduction in our standard of living, whereas quite the opposite is true; when one starts to live in a way that is compassionate, sustainable, and considerate to the poor and meek of the earth, one derives a far greater sense of satisfaction from life than from living for fleeting, temporary hits to satisfy brief and addictive cravings.

So this is what I’m essentially proposing in this piece: that slacktivism is not a bad thing in itself, but it can reinforce and excuse apathetic behaviour with its “quick-fix” ineffectiveness, and the bottom line about it is that it is simply not enough on its own to steer us from the course towards inevitable self-destruction that we have set ourselves upon with our wasteful, exploitative lifestyles of casual indifference, instant gratification and selfish convenience. We (and I include myself in this – like every person on this planet, I am nowhere near perfect and have plenty of my own vices) need to turn the lens upon ourselves and figure out what changes and sacrifices we personally need to make to work together for the greater good of humanity and our planet.

It is only through changing ourselves that true change for a sustainable, compassionate future can come about. And this will not happen by sitting back and clicking buttons on a computer…

So you’re here. You’re thinking, “well this is interesting/boring/stupid/witty/pedestrian/riveting etc etc etc,” but you’re probably also wondering what the Trapjaw thing is all about.

Well, if you’ve read this post, you’ll understand why I chose the Masters of the Universe theme to colour this corner of cyberspace, but I didn’t quite go into details about why I chose Trapjaw specifically. To be honest, there are a multitude of layers regarding the imagery and symbolism conjured up by this strange, blue-skinned character that appeal to me and are relevant in some way to aspects of myself. I could go into a lot of depth, I suppose, and here’s my Literature degree begging to speak, but I don’t think that a literary essay is necessary here.

“The Menace of Trapjaw!”

Firstly, the most basic connection is that when I was a child, he was a perennial favourite of mine in terms of Masters of the Universe characters. His position would temporarily be replaced by other characters with whom I’d develop momentary obsessions, such as Beast-Man, Merman, Clawful, Whiplash and Webstor. As you can see, I was solely interested in the villains of the series. To me, they were a lot more visually and conceptually interesting than the heroes, who were usually purely human characters such as He Man, Teela, Man-At-Arms and Ram-Man. They looked normal (well, with their hulk-like muscles and strangely disproportionate leg length, relatively normal) and this didn’t captivate my interest. The bad guys looked cool; they were true monsters in the visual sense of the word, and this appealed to my young artist’s mind. Instead of the boring peach-tone human skin, I could use my whole palette of crayon colours to draw these bad boys.

I especially liked ones that were as different from the others as possible. Most of the figurines were cast from exactly the same mold, meaning that He-Man had exactly the same body as Skeletor, Tri-Klops, Zodac and pretty much every other character, bar some different feet and a “hairy” chest here or there. Trapjaw, however, had completely unique legs, with armour plating and green, glowing panels (at least that’s what they were in my mind’s eye). He had a wickedly cool robotic arm with three interchangeable mountable weapons, and of course that moveable and menacing jaw. And his crimson helmet reminded me a lot, perhaps subconsciously, of my father’s crimson motorcycle helmet that he wore at the time.

Also, Trapjaw seemed to be completely unavailable in Pietermaritzburg, although my neighbour managed to find one, along with almost every other character in the series. I do remember seeing a Trapjaw figurine once in the OK supermarket in the middle of town, but I’d usually only get one of these figurines on my birthday or for Christmas, or some other special occasion, and that time was none of those. We all know how infinitely more desirable something becomes, especially to a child, when it seems unobtainable…

The image of Trapjaw that was on the back of every MOTU box. It was captioned “Trapjaw – Evil and Armed for Combat”.

Now let’s shift time-frames out of the early 80s and nearer to the present. So why Trapjaw now? What’s relevance does a childhood fascination have for my life as a 30-year-old man? Well, about a decade ago, when I first starting getting into internet forums (the internet was rather late in arriving to South African shores), and I needed to pick a user name, it seemed lame to just call myself “jon1982” or some variant thereof. I racked my brains for something suitable; something short, simple and easy to remember that was also somehow relevant to me personally, and the image of that childhood obsession popped into my mind. I was drumming in a Durban-based punk band called Stanley Anvil at the time, and all of the guys in the band had a great liking for vintage 80s action figures, and this rekindled my own interest in childhood nostalgia. Indeed, when I tried to quit the band (I loved the guys and the music, but the commute from Pietermaritzburg to Durban to rehearse was a killer, both in terms of time and petrol money in my mom’s juice-sucking ‘1969 Beetle), they bribed me to stay with a Trapjaw figurine!

Anyway, this brought the old half-orc, half-robot hybrid to my mind, and I decided that his name would be a suitable handle for my online alter-ego. It seemed that there was more to it than mere nostalgic fondness, though; I had more in common with Trapjaw than I thought. I had been frequently referred to as a “machine” due to my furious and frenetic drumming style – half-man, half-machine, just like Trapjaw. Like his interchangeable weapons on his right hand, I liked to think that I had a small but decent set of skills that I could switch between at will. And, the cherry on top: like Trapjaw, I have a metal lower jaw. Well, not entirely metal. It is still composed of bone, but due to a pretty severe motorcycle accident in which my lower jaw was snapped in two places, I now had two titanium plates permanently affixed to my jawbone (no, they don’t set off airport metal detectors).

So there you have it; the reason for my choice of Trapjaw as an online alter-ego. Feeling enlightened? Good… let’s move on 🙂

Writing. That’s the word, isn’t it? That’s what it’s all about, right? This blog, in a microcosmic sense of the word, and to apply a more grandiose presumption, my life. But what, in a sense, is writing all about, at least, in the very personal context of my own perception? That’s what’s at the core of this whole thing.

Writing is storytelling. And storytelling is inextricably interwoven with language and song, forming the core threads of the rope that binds us, Generation Z, lazing our lives away in front of luminescent computer screens here in the 21st century, with our primeval ancestors who shivered in caves around smoky campfires and prayed to forgotten stone idols to give them the courage and strength and shaky faith in their flint spears to protect them from the fangs of the sabre-toothed tiger, or to provide the tribe with a mammoth kill to see them through the long, cold winter.

A writer is what I’ve wanted to be for as long as I can remember. Or, to be more precise, a storyteller, for this was a dream that germinated from seeds that were sowed long before I was able to read the letters of the Roman alphabet. It all started when I was three years old. I remember it as clearly as if it were but a few weeks ago, although the notion of the toddler I was then has long since disappeared into the faltering mists of time. My father took me one Saturday morning, as he often did, to the local mall a few blocks away from my house. The word “mall” is perhaps not quite the most accurate term to describe the single strip of around a dozen stores that constituted the Scottsville Shopping Centre in those days, although to my wide eyes it was a continent long, especially if one lost sight of those familiar fatherly knees and calves in a forest of giant-limbs that soared up beyond the sight of one’s toddler-vision. I know that I was three years old because this was before I started attending pre-primary school in 1986 (“kindergarten”, as it is known in other parts of the world). Anyway, to cut a long story short, my father, after he had payed his routine visits to the bank and the post office, decided to stop in with me at the local CNA (a stationery slash book slash toy store). And it was from there that he bought me my first ever Masters of the Universe action figure; a small but not insignificant gift, for it was to forever alter the course of my life.

Zodac – my first ever Masters of the Universe figurine. He was part of the original 1981 lineup.

I remember that my father picked out the toy for me, because although I was excited about getting a toy, the array of MOTU figurines lined up on the CNA shelves was rather bewildering and I had no urgent preference for any particular one. However, upon arriving home and tearing the little plastic being from its factory-sealed prison, I discovered a wonderful surprise concealed behind the figurine: a small comic. I eagerly began paging through the little comic and the gears of my sapling mind began whirring with a turbocharged freneticism that I had never before experienced. The pictures, the colours, the action; all of this appealed keenly to something deep inside of me. I demanded that my father read me the comic, which he did, delighted at the success of his purchase. I’d page through the comic again and again, and get my father to read it to me as often as he was willing to. Later, as I collected more MOTU comics, the imaginary world that had been born in my mind began to grow and develop. I began inventing my own MOTU characters, whom I would talk excitedly about with my best friend James at preschool (we bonded especially well over our shared MOTU obsession), and we would pretend to be these characters as we fought imaginary battles and raced through fantastic landscapes on the grassy and undulating playground of New England Pre-Primary. At home, all my parents needed to do to amuse me was to give me a stack of blank white paper and my box of Crayola 24-colour crayons, and I’d be lost in my own world for a few hours, drawing MOTU characters and other fantastic creatures that I’d create in my mind.

some of the original series of MOTU comics that I owned.

Later, when I learned to read in grade one, I discovered a new favorite place: the town library. I honestly could not get enough books, and I devoured them with as much ferocity as my newly-literate mind and still-rather-limited vocabulary could handle. There were the usual childhood reads; Dr Seuss classics, Richard Scarry’s books, The Berenstain Bears, Curious George and of course a number of classic Ladybird fairy tales and fables, but honestly, I was most interested in non-fiction back then, interestingly enough; the stories of characters in far away worlds or other times and places in human history took a back seat to the real life stories of wild animals. I became utterly obsessed with finding out as much as I could about wild animals, to the extent that when I had exhausted the supply of materials in the Children’s section of the library, I’d get my parents to check out books for me from the adult section. I’d set out my blank papers at home, and on the right hand paper, I’d copy out a full-sized picture of whichever animal I was documenting with my crayons, and on the left I’d compile, in my shaky six-year-old hand, a list of facts and figures about the animal. After I’d put together a good few pages, I’d staple them together (well, my mother would do that for me), and I’d draw a front and back cover for my book. I was self-publishing long before anyone had ever imagined the existence of Createspace or Lulu!

Later my interest shifted to history (I was big into knights and pirates, mostly), and then as my reading skill developed to the point where I was comfortably able to handle novels, I became an insatiable devourer of fiction. I entertained the notion of writing my own stories from an early age, and actually started a few out, with the intention of making them novels, but I never managed to finish them. In my teenage years, I put down my pen for a while and picked up drumsticks, as the raging, angst-ridden sounds of grunge, punk and alternative rock spoke to a newly-awakened part of my adolescent soul that screamed rebellion with an irresistible fire, but always, at the back of my mind, were the stories, the stories, the stories.

Now, after turning around in my head since those nostalgia-thick days of early childhood, these stories are finally taking form and shape in the physical world. I am adding my own string to the vast and unending thread of human history and culture; I am writing, and writing with a pace and fury and determination that I have never had the courage to harness before. Hopefully my writing, my stories, will form a thread that spans decades and lasts for the length of my own lifetime, and perhaps this addition to the rope of the aeon-old tradition of storytelling will extend to generations who are born after my own return to the dust from whence I came, although that is perhaps too lofty a height to aim for right now.

But, what is a dream if not an unreachable ideal? I will grasp as fully as I can at this one, and see what my fingertips eventually encircle.